David Warner can now be coach of Australia, NSW or another state, or any Big Bash League franchise. He can be chair or a director of Cricket Australia. If things really fall apart for the national team, he can even be Test captain. He won’t, but he can.
So ends a strange subplot to the 2018 Cape Town cheating scandal, of which Warner has admitted to being the instigator. Before fronting the CA review panel last week, he accepted the statement, “I admit the offence that I have been charged with and accept the imposition of the proposed sanction(s).”
Unlike the other known participants, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, Warner was singled out for a leadership ban. But the ban had no time limit. He could have that ban lifted in “exceptional circumstances”, according to Cricket Australia’s rules, but there was no definition of those circumstances.
He had made a stab at having the ban lifted in 2022 but withdrew when it seemed he was going to have to relitigate the original case. Now – with Cricket Australia supporting his application – he has had the ban lifted.
It was always peculiar that the player who was neither captain of the Australian team in Cape Town in 2018 nor the one who took sandpaper onto the field was the one who received the heaviest sanction.
Warner was perceived as the “mastermind” of the scheme in part because of the stigma he had earned throughout his career: the open sledging, the bar-room punch he laid on Joe Root in Birmingham in 2013, a collection of other incidents contributing to his reputation.
David Warner’s ban has been lifted by Cricket Australia.Credit: AP
The public was less prepared to forgive him than, for example, Smith, who occasionally became captain again after he served his ban.
The disgusting behaviour of South African crowds in 2018 did not give Warner an excuse for cheating, but it did, in the judgement of Cricket Australia and many in the public, give him a motive. This focus on one individual helped everyone who wanted to ring-fence the Cape Town incident as an exception. A cursory hearing in the days after the incident, a heavy ban for the “mastermind”: cricket didn’t have a problem, it just had one bad egg.
The bad egg is now reformed. Warner has had his ban lifted thanks to his admission of guilt and compelling character testimony from Pat Cummins, Greg Chappell, Lisa Sthalekar, Kane Williamson and Trent Copeland. Warner did his time, changed his ways, and now wants to contribute more to Australian cricket as a titular leader, giving young players the benefit of his cautionary tale.
He told the CA review panel last week that he has been effective in deterrence: “We do the spirit of the game lectures so well and truly across all of that and yeah, I’ve upheld that since 2018 which I’m proud of and I’m proud that no-one else has offended, not just in Australia but in the world.”
In evidence to the panel, Copeland said, “I’ve seen a real difference in Dave … that you can’t fake.” Sthalekar spoke of Warner’s “genuine remorse, rehabilitation and developed leadership skills” since 2019. Cummins referenced Warner’s “upholding of the spirit of cricket and his respect for the opposition” during last year’s tours of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Williamson, a teammate of Warner at the Hyderabad Sunrisers, and Chappell spoke positively about Warner’s genuine remorse and positive contribution to the game. These highly respected figures all know Warner well enough to observe that he has genuinely reformed.
And yet Warner was, in the practical sense, already forgiven. This was where it got strange.
After his return from his ban, he never consistently regained the form that had put him in the all-time top rank of Australian Test openers. Post-2019, he produced occasional big Test scores against weak attacks at home. His away record, never strong, deteriorated further.
David Warner fronts the media after his ball-tampering ban in 2018.Credit: Brook Mitchell
He barely merited a place in the Test team, yet selectors continued to shy away from a difficult decision and allowed inertia to take hold. Was Warner picking himself in the team?
His manager, James Erskine, repeatedly insinuated that Warner might implicate others in the sandpaper plot. These words quacked and waddled like a threat. Warner never contradicted or sacked Erskine. More inertia. More inference of blackmail.
Warner was allowed to nominate his final Test match. This week, he said he might even be available to return to Test cricket.
As his performance declined, his sway over his selection seemed to grow firmer. Predictably, the national selectors and team are paying the price now.
Warner’s memoir is keenly awaited by some who expect him to tip the bucket. If he plays true to character, though, he will do what’s best for himself and keep the threats unspoken and therefore more powerful. The insinuations have lost him friends among teammates but have increased his influence.
By not opposing Warner’s application, Cricket Australia has helped him rule a line under the past. If Warner got life without parole, what incentive would there have been for him to become, as he put it to the panel, “perceived better on the field, not just, you know, I want to be playing hard, but I want to be that person that they want to have a beer with after the game?”
The missed opportunity and the shame over Cape Town has little to do with Warner. It could have been a time for truth-telling in cricket in Australia, around the globe, past and present. It wasn’t. Instead, it was a time for singling out the three who got caught, and one in particular. Six and a half years on there is a formal end to the sanctions against Warner, confession and forgiveness.
Closure, sort of. Cricket authorities focused on punishing one person, conveniently diverting attention from a problem that had infected the international game. Warner’s punishment is over. The truth-telling? Still waiting.
